MicroVision, Inc.

Good afternoon and welcome to the Microvision fourth quarter and full year 2020 financial and operating results call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Lindsay Stibbard. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good afternoon and welcome, everyone, to Microvision's fourth quarter and full year 2020 Financial and Operating Results Conference Call. Joining me on today's call are Sumit Sharma, Chief Executive Officer, and Steve Holt, Chief Financial Officer. The information in today's conference call includes forward-looking statements, including statements regarding exploration of strategic alternatives, sale of our product verticals or technology, sale or merger of the company, or completing any such strategic transaction, maximizing shareholder value, managing costs, expected customer orders, future royalties, progress under and benefits of existing contracts and license agreements, and the negotiation of future agreements, customer product launches, advantages of our technology, litigation, business execution, projections of future operations and financial results, availability of funds, product development applications and benefits, availability and supply of products and key components, commercialization of our technology, market opportunities, and future demand, as well as statements containing words like opportunity, potential, possibly, intend, believe, goals, paths, expects, plans, will, could, would, likely, and other similar expressions. These statements are not guarantees of future performance. Actual results could differ materially from the future results implied or expressed in the forward-looking statements. We encourage you to review our various SEC filings, including our annual report on Form 10-K, filed on March 12, 2020, and Form 10-Q filed on October 30, 2020, as well as various other SEC filings made from time to time in which we discuss risk factors associated with investing in microvision. These risk factors could cause results to differ materially from those implied or expressed in our forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this call, and except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update this information. The financial numbers presented on the call today are included in our press release and in the 8-K file today. Both are available from the Investor Relations section of our website. This conference call will also be available for audio replay in the Investor Relations section of Microvision's website at www.microvision.com. And now I'd like to turn the call over to Sumit Sharma. Sumit?

Thank you, Lindsay. Good afternoon, everyone. As we look back at 2020, I see it as a defining year for us. A year ago, we faced a very challenging business environment and global outlook. Despite this, we made important progress that allowed us to stabilize the company for 2021 and positioned us to advance our technology while pursuing strategic alternatives. I would like to start by thanking our employees for the dedication, creativity, innovation, and execution. The potential value of this work is just starting to come into focus as the market segment in advanced driver safety and autonomous driving sees established multinational technology companies, software companies focused on delivering mobility as a service, and traditional automotive OEMs and tier one companies start to invest in and engage in preparation for this emerging market. I would also like to thank our shareholders for their support that allows us to focus on obtaining the right value while exploring strategic alternatives, including a possible sale of the company. This support has enabled us to have a stronger balance sheet as we continue evaluating our options while we work to complete our long-range LiDAR sample, which we expect to be best in class. I will expand on this a bit later in this call. Stronger Balance Sheet allows us to add staff that we believe increases the value of our company for potential strategic partners, as well as reduces risk to our 2021 development goals. I expect us to continue adding key staff through 2021 to enhance our ability to demonstrate to the market and potential strategic partners two sustainable strategic advantages of our technology. First, the ability to deliver a high-performance, long-range LiDAR sensor that is designed to meet or exceed current OEM requirements. And second, scalability of our sensor to support future price targets. Over the last 12 months, we also welcomed three new board members to our board of directors with considerable expertise in automotive and augmented reality market segments. I believe adding these new expertise An insight to our current board to augment existing expertise in business, including expertise in mergers and acquisitions, strengthens our ability to create value for our shareholders. Over the past few decades, we have leveraged our strengths to solve some of the toughest technical problems anticipated by multinational OEMs as they look to new market opportunities using laser beam scanning technology. In our augmented reality interactive display, and consumer LiDAR product verticals, we pioneered scalable solutions that we believe are far ahead of global competitors. The impact and value of what we achieved was hard to measure since there were no competitive solutions for these verticals. Our automotive LiDAR product addresses an emerging market segment that has the potential to impact millions of lives in mobility and safety with potentially billions of dollars of sensor, and vehicle sales for OEMs and multinational technology companies over coming decades. I believe this market demand represents a great opportunity for MicroVision to showcase our competitive advantage of high performance and scalability. We expect our long-range LiDAR sensor to demonstrate what we believe will be the high performance required for advanced driver assistance systems and autonomous driving. This performance is calibrated to meet current OEM requirements and would include range of up to 250 meters and beyond, a high-resolution point clock with up to 10.8 million points per second from a single return, object velocities relative to ego vehicle from a time-of-flight LIDAR, low latency, intensity, inertial output, and interference immunity from sunlight and other LIDARs. With such capabilities in our first potential product, we believe a future product could then include a LiDAR and a camera module combined in a single sensor. We expect such a future product could reduce the number of sensors required per vehicle to achieve features for advanced safety and autonomous driving. This improvement in cost per vehicle could support faster adoption. We believe our capability to demonstrate scale is important in this segment. We have successfully demonstrated our solid state technology to achieve scale over more than a decade. Our custom MEMS and ASICs scale from 200 millimeter wafer technology, where we have successfully delivered products for OEM programs. Our LiDAR is based on 905 nanometer laser diode technology that is currently available and is the plan of record for anchor technology companies. Additional innovations in injection-molded free-form plastic optics and multi-axis active alignment automation, automated testing, and closed-loop control algorithms, among others, have prepared us to show scalability from our pilot line. As I mentioned in our call last October regarding our eight-sample timing, we expect the hardware for demonstration along with select benchmark data from our development platform will be available to interested parties in the April timeframe, followed by continued benchmarking and testing. I also expect that a version of our solid-state long-range LiDAR sensor could be available for sale in small quantities in Q3 or Q4 this year. Our solid-state long-range LiDAR sensor could enable any interested party to perform testing with our sensor on their moving platforms such as cars and long haul trucks. This is important because we believe scalability being a key strategic advantage of our technology needs to be demonstrated to help realize value for our shareholders. Also, we expect to establish a pilot line with appropriate capacity to demonstrate scalability as we have done over the last decade for multinational technology partners. Let me be specific on this. Our capabilities include delivering process maps, control plans, supply chain partnerships, automation, and product integrity qualification for high yield design that can ramp. We have confidence in our ability to scale our sensor from our pilot line. In addition to our automotive LIDAR vertical, we believe we remain well positioned in augmented reality, interactive display, and consumer LIDAR product verticals for strategic alternatives. The impact of the global pandemic on consumer devices in these segments is evolving as is clarity about opportunities from OEMs focused in these markets. In conclusion, we remain committed to exploring strategic alternatives, including a potential sale of the company in part or whole to maximize value for our shareholders. I believe with our advanced technology and continued dedication of our employees, our vision on products and markets, and strength of our balance sheet, we can deliver a scalable, best-in-class, long-range LiDAR sensor. I am profoundly optimistic about our path forward. Finally, today the company announced that David Westgore will retire from Microvision. David has been a key contributor for over 15 years. He is stepping down from his current role, but will be available to support the transition to a new general counsel. As he approaches his 68th birthday, he feels it is time to look to his planned retirement and enjoy the time with family, with the company on a solid path forward. On behalf of our employees and shareholders, I would like to thank David for his dedication and service to Microvision. I will miss our time together and his counsel, and I wish him a wonderful retirement. Now let me turn over the call to Steve to discuss the fourth quarter and full year results. Steve?

Thank you, Sumit. Good afternoon, everyone. Before I move on with my prepared remarks, let me just echo Sumit's sentiments about David's retirement. I too will miss the daily interaction and wish him the best in retirement. For the fourth quarter, revenue was $395,000. All the fourth quarter's revenue was royalty revenue It was attributable to our April 2017 customer. In comparison, in the third quarter, we recognized $639,000, $539,000 in royalty revenue, and about $100,000 in product revenue. Revenue for the full year was $3.1 million, $1.7 million from royalty revenue, and $1.3 million in product revenue. The product revenue was mainly from shipments to our April 2017 customer in Q1 before we moved to a royalty model starting on March 1, 2020. As a reminder, I want to point out that royalties that are due to Microvision related to our April 2017 customer will be credited against the prepayment made by the customer in 2017. When the prepayment is exhausted, the customer will begin making cash payments for royalties due. At the end of Q4, the balance of the prepayment stood at $7.8 million. As I've previously reported, the $7.8 million prepayment is not refundable to the customer, and the $7.8 million is on the balance sheet as a contract liability. During the year ended December 31, 2020, we applied a total of $2 million against the prepayment. Royalties have no cost of revenue, so fourth quarter cost of revenue was zero, resulting in a gross profit of $395,000. In comparison, gross profit was $639,000 in the prior quarter. Operating expenses were $4 million in the fourth quarter, up from $3.5 million in the prior quarter. The increase is due to additional expenses related to our development work on our first-generation LIDAR sensor and personnel additions we've made to our engineering staff. We talked a minute about headcount. A year ago, in February 2020, we reduced our headcount approximately 60% because we were not sure what the future held. While lowering headcount was essential at that time, we've concluded that we need more people to advance our LIDAR product to a point where it would be easy or ready to scale. Additionally, we believe having a more rounded out or complete team makes us more attractive to those who may consider strategic transactions. Fortunately, we've been able to rehire some of the employees that we were forced to lay off in February 2020, and we've added some new personnel. Today, our headcount stands at 53. For the fourth quarter, our net loss was 3.6 million, or two cents per share, and this compares to a loss of 2.8 million, or two cents per share, in the prior quarter. In the fourth quarter, cash used in operations was $4.2 million, which compares to cash used in the prior quarter of $3.5 million. We expect that our cash used in operations for Q1 2021 will be in the range of $5 to $5.5 million. The expected increase will be due to continued spending on parts, tooling, and contractors to develop the first-generation long-range LIDAR and the increase in headcount. I'm very pleased to announce that we ended the fourth quarter with total cash and cash equivalents of $16.9 million. up from $5 million in the prior quarter. In addition to the $16.9 million cash balance, we raised net proceeds of $61.4 million from two ATMs we completed in January and February of 2021. This puts our balance sheet in the strongest position it has been in for many years. And based on the December 31st cash balance and the 2021 proceeds from our ATMs, We anticipate the financial statements that we will be releasing shortly will no longer have a going concern opinion. We are very pleased where the company is today. We will now open the call for questions.

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your touchtone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Our first question will come from Glenn Mattson with Ladenburg Salmon.

Hi, thanks for taking the question. I have a few, so just bear with me. So on the interactive display, as we're trying to kind of think about what that could be worth as far as to a third party or strategic buyer or something, you know, it was about a year ago thinking about that, uh, this time that the large customer that you're potentially working with kind of step back from that project. So, um, you know, perhaps could you give us an update on like, is there been any further discussions on new products? Has that customer come back? I mean, there's a lot of applications where that could be useful. Obviously there's a lot of home speaker companies who would maybe be interested in, um, you know, differentiating themselves and, uh, You know, that product's been available now for a few years, more or less. I know it's been improved over time, but maybe you can give us some color, Sumit, on how much interest there is right now in that part of the business.

Yeah, I think, Glenn, that's a good question. But as I mentioned in my remarks, you know, the impacts of global pandemics and what's that done to consumer device demand, you know, that gets stabilized based on, you know, what OEM outlook would be. But at this point, you know, we are well positioned in the three verticals I mentioned on the consumer side. And beyond that, like, you know, we're not giving any more clarity. But you're right. There's, you know, as a consumer myself and yourself, we can recognize in our lives, especially in the last year, there's multiple opportunities to have a technology like that, especially when it's a class one and it could have been in a lot of different places for a lot of different applications.

On the April 17 customer, on the... On that display piece, is there, you know, that's been out for a while now. So maybe can you talk about, are they seeing an uptake in usage or anything? There's a lot more, you know, AR, VR stuff going on these days. So can you just give us, do you have any sense or are you completely separated now that you've more of a licensed partner rather than a solutions provider for them?

Yeah, you know, in April 2017, customer, you know, we are expecting that royalties in 2021 will increase over 2020. You know, and we're rooting for that product to do well and for it to really be successful. So we do think there will be some increase.

Okay. And then moving on to the LIDAR stuff. So congrats on the progress. Nice to know. I think you said the April timeframe. which I assume being that you think you'll have product for shipment late in the back half is like just plus or minus a few weeks, I guess. So, you know, I guess it's clearly, it's a big market and some of you talked a lot about all the ways that your product differentiates from the numerous other LIDAR makers out there. But the biggest one I think I heard about was kind of, the ability to reduce the number of sensors on a vehicle. So I just like some clarity on that, I think, because it is important, I think. And then, you know, are you suggesting that there would not be a need for any redundancies or that instead of three or four sensors, you can get down to one or two or just a sensor system? So maybe you could just kind of clarify or maybe expand on that. I think that's an interesting point.

That's a great question. It's one of my favorite topics, so I'll try to keep it concise instead of talking too much about it. I think if you think about these sensors, a lot of them, redundancy is going to be dictated by regulation. A sensor's capability, what will happen over a long period of time with actual miles driven on enough cars for consumers or testing, regulatory bodies like NHTSA, Euro NCAP, they will decide what's required. But as you can imagine, for every, the big business is OEM. A single OEM, let's say, shipping 10 plus million vehicles compared to some shipping only half a million. Things are going to change, as we know. But they will decide which is the most scalable product, long term, accommodate for the regulation requirements. But anybody would want a solution, regardless of the regulation requirements, solution that's the most concise, that gives them the best opportunity possible to ship a product at a competitive price. Adoption prices increases. the lower the number of sensor counts. So I think everybody knows this. If you're just watching the news, cars have radars and ultrasonics and lidars and multiple camera modules. But then there's another bigger proportion of it that is not talked about often, which is called the ECU, where all of this is fused together. And that's where the decisions are made, based on planning and maneuvering. So if you think about some of the choices we made, some of the hard problems that we chose to solve for multiple years before launching our product, Obviously, range is important. That's a basic, you have to have the range, so certainly have that. But this high resolution where something at 250 meters, as tall as me, probably even shorter than me, significantly shorter than me, you could identify, that is a very compelling thing. So resolution is a very important one. On top of that, clustered velocity, so you can predict how things are moving in relation to the car you're driving, the ego vehicle, that's very important. Again, in the same sensor. This whole point of like 30 Hertz, you know our low latency This is very important because cameras camera modules that are in the cars right now. They operate there So sensor fusion becomes a lot simpler unlike, you know, if a sensor was that let's say 5 Hertz 10 Hertz 15 Hertz You know, some people will say oh, it's all the way to 120 Hertz Well, we can be there as well. But what we do know is sensor fusion requires a very very simple computing to merge them simple relative speaking and But then you can start seeing pieces come together that make the entire system, including the computing and the sensitivity required to deliver true L3, L4 features as regulations are written for them. So in general, having a sensor, a LiDAR with such high resolution at the latency, which is about the same as a camera module, and a computer system that can actually fuse the sensor and perform all the analysis on the fly That's the path to a scalable product in general. Now, what else stays in there? What are the features out there? It's regulation, of course, what OEM want to offer, what their differentiation would be. So this is the data all the way back from my time at Google and other places. This is the problem that everybody's been looking to solve is how do you take the number of sensors required to achieve autonomous driving and advanced safety features? And this is the path. So again, this is what I believe and this is what we believe. And, you know, you can see in the market right now, you know, you see different people feeling different moving platform testing. And we're excited about having this product available for them to put it on their moving platform and explore this.

Great. That's great color. Thanks for that. So just two questions kind of about the balance sheet. Number one, I guess, now that you have this big pile of cash, which probably equates to somewhere to the tune of three to four years at the current burn rate, assuming there's no revenue coming in the door. Is there some element of the thought process to maybe go it alone at this point? There's less urgency necessarily to find a partner for sure. So just curious about if you're thinking about maintaining yourself as an independent entity you know, now that you have this cash?

Right, so I think, you know, consolidation is actually happening in the market, as you know, right? There's more than 100 LiDAR companies, so that's part of it. So we have to keep that in mind. And consolidations are, you know, horizontal, vertical, depending on the market by itself is settling. The best solution, the best scalable solution, is most likely going to win. So that's a premise that we just have to sort of remember. So the concept of strategic alternatives is the most pragmatic way I can describe how one would have to approach this as we think about going forward. So this concept of as a standalone company, you know, I think for us, you know, we've mentioned on the call, you know, we continued the advanced development and expect to have the best in class LIDAR, as we said that. So that positions us for that one key part of the conversation about why is this such a differentiated product? The second piece is also extremely important, which is scalability. So if you think about all the consolidation, it's going to whittle down to a small group of companies that have the most gravity around their solution, and it's not the one that's got the flash in the pan kind of like what conversation they can have. This has to be the protein and the fiber part of it where you have actually thought about what problem you want to solve, and you're way ahead of everybody. That's the conversation. So that's how I look at it. So there's Question about standalone company, I think it's a good one, but I think the way to really think about it, consolidation is a point that is happening. Strategic alternatives are there. We certainly have a pilot line that I think we can ramp to anything that is required on our A sample. B and C sample, I can give a little bit more color on that later, but Those are done when there's specifically something, an OEM that they want to customize, and that goes towards their product. So right now, that's not there. So the standalone company, I mean, of course we can go there, but strategic alternatives is how you have to think about it because where the market is in the LIDAR space. How is anybody going to justify all these valuations with the kind of revenue that would have to be a reasonable multiple to that in the future? Right, Glenn? So I'm saying that strategic alternatives is the right way to think about it. And, you know, we are a standalone company right now, but we're up for sale. So I think that's the best way I can answer it. Sure.

So the last one for me, just the – so for the third ATM that you did, I've never seen one that was announced and then completed inside of, like, six days. So I understand the first two, like, were done – you know, they were a little longer than that, obviously, but they had to be done. And it was kind of imperative that you got them done quickly to get enough balance sheet power – to hold out long enough to do negotiations for sale and everything. But the third one, you weren't necessarily under extreme balance sheet pressure. Now the stock had run up a lot. So I guess I'm just trying to think about how you feel. You know, in other words, if you thought the stock had a lot of room to run, you might have taken a longer time because you weren't on any, any time crunch balance sheet wise to get that done. So just kind of think about just, you know, if you could just discuss the thoughts about, how you executed it so quickly.

I think the volumes at the time after that were very high in the share trades, and so we were able to really be quite patient. It didn't take very long to sell through that amount of shares, but the price was high and the volume was quite high, so we were able to just take advantage of that. I guess I'd also say that on some of the earlier ATMs, we were able to clear those in a relatively short amount of time, too, largely because the volume on the share trading was high, and the prices were also good at those times as well, though not as high as on the third one.

All right. Okay. Thanks, Steve.

Our next question comes from Kevin Deedy with HC Wainwright.

Good afternoon, gentlemen. Thank you very much for hosting the call and taking my questions. Listen, I realize that there's a lot of background noise, so I apologize. I'm not sure if you can even hear me at this level. So let me know that first before I continue.

We can hear you, Kevin.

Oh, good. Okay, thanks. So, Summit, you mentioned, you know, the compatibility with cameras. So can you talk about that? And, I mean, I get the whole 30 hertz thing. but I'm wondering how much further you're going to go. Are you going to try to continue to work on your module and integrate it with a camera on your own, or do you think you're just going to be able to pass off the LiDAR technology separately and go with that?

As a reviewer, we're focused on our LiDAR product, but it was trying to draw a future vision of Part of the roadmap for anybody reasonable would be to accommodate that and what is that benefit to that. So by making this LIDAR to the level we've done, what is the real benefit, right? That LIDAR by itself is extremely valuable, right? I mean, I'm always optimistic about the company. A year ago, where we were, people asked, what do you think, you know, my provision, where it is. I think even back then I said it's worth billions, right? Took a year, you know, so that's what the market valuation is. So if you think about the value of the LIDAR is where I'm trying to say that what problem has it solved? Like how is just a LIDAR another widget that another company, David Westbrook's company has another widget and how do you differentiate? So I'm trying to draw that bigger picture of how important it is to actually solve these problems in these segments. That's point number one. So that's how you think about it. So we're not developing that product. Is it part of the current plan? No, absolutely not. I'm just saying that that would be the next one. If a partner comes along and they want to do something with that, that's perfectly fine. But I wanted just to provide the color so people understand what's the benefit. When everybody hears about this company X makes half a million units and their CEO doesn't believe in LIDAR. So I get all sorts of questions all the time. So I've never really brought a point about that. But it's about that LIDAR will become an integrated item in L3 and L4 safety as you go forward. But the ultimate solution is the number of sensors that are required to make a car to that level of safety is too big. So therefore, adoption rates will be low. So therefore, over a longer period of time, if you want to go to higher volume in whatever time frame, I think there's other competitors that have financials out that project years into the future. That's the point I'm trying to bring out is what solves that. A LiDAR by itself will not solve it. It will completely go to the level that's required. It's a very important piece, but you still have a more expensive part. A holistic part of that entire system is also the computing. If you have a five or eight kilowatt water-cooled computer in a trunk, it's the only way you can do this autonomous driving. That's not scalable. People use their trunks for other things. So again, that sort of puts in context where that technology is. So I'm just saying it's a future roadmap that how to visualize why the problems we've solved are extremely important.

Yeah, no, understood. I think you did a great job making those points clear. So, I mean, I guess I was just sort of thinking of the next step in terms of convenience for your potential future partners or customers.

Yeah, right. That's why I thought that, yeah. I'm going to be very crisp about that, right? We're focused on our LIDAR, a sample, exactly what I said. But we're open for strategic alternatives. We know what we have to do, but just because we know ultimate solutions years out because we have experiences and we have, you know, fortunate to have some really great board members, that does not mean that, you know, we're embarking on that. You know, I think being very crisp about what we're working on and our commitment to strategic alternatives because, you know, that just kind of makes sense where the game is right now.

Fair enough, fair enough. I didn't, I apologize if you thought I read too much into it. It just seemed like the logical next step.

I apologize, Kevin. No, that's, my directness was not, like, as if, it's a great question. It's a valid question, right? It's just, I want to make sure that, you know, lots of people listen in to these calls, right? So it's kind of important that, you know, people have clarity of thought of exactly what we're working on, right? The interest of that concept is to say why we would be winning. So if you think about this consolidation happening in the market, right? If anything else, my comment says, why would we be one of the final companies? If you have solved a key problem and you're extremely valuable, of course I'm optimistic about this company. Usually optimistic what it could actually enable. So that's why I was just trying to be crisp. I don't want my optimism to somehow mix in with what our plan is. Our plan is exactly what I said, so that's why I wanted to be pretty crisp about that.

Fair enough. I appreciate the candor. Okay, so I know, Glenn, Got a couple of words in on cash burn, but I was hoping maybe Steve could go back to that topic. What's your expectations for headcount, Steve? I think you mentioned 53 total now. Where do you think that goes year-end, and how does that change your cash burn?

Well, we haven't given a forecast on where it's going to go. We see that we'll be adding some. you know, throughout the year. But, you know, just to sort of kind of bookend it, I think, you know, it'd be in the realm of, you know, 80-ish would be as high as I would think it would be, potentially lower, but just it's not ramping tremendously. You know, about a year ago, when we were in February of 2020, I think we were at like 78, uh, 80 people around that, around that timeframe. And you gotta remember that cut we made in February was, was pretty deep. Um, so, uh, as, as far as the cash burn, you know, as far as I'm projecting out right now, we're giving guidance on is this, you know, five, five and a half million next quarter. And, uh, as you can imagine, there's a fair amount of materials and stuff going into building this product. And then, uh, those spent those expenses would come down and then, um, So I don't have a long-term forecast, but it shouldn't go up too much more.

Okay. Last question for me. I know Summit spent a lot of time on this, too, but can you just kind of go over exactly what will be tangible within the April timeframe?

So in the April timeframe, we'll have the A sample hardware. that can be demonstrated and shown. And also, we would have some benchmark data from the ASAMPLE device, as well as from our development platforms, that we can share that data as well, so the folks understand what the ASAMPLE is capturing and seeing.

Okay. And then, three, two, four, two, this... And beyond that, Kevin, of course, benchmark testing and data...

further testing just continues, you know, including any other requests that may come back for custom testing so that the work continues after that.

Of course, of course. Understood. And then 3Q, 4Qs, that's your B sample?

No, no, that's A sample. That's where it's up for sale. So as I said, you know, potentially if somebody wants to put a piece of hardware on a moving platform testing, because, you know, obviously we're not investing in moving platform testing, you know, on cars or long-haul trucking, you know, whoever... However, that could be utilized, right? We would have the capability to build that. But it's a pilot line in the sense that it can be ramped. You know, obviously that's always been our wheelhouse. But, you know, we're just being reasonable about, you know, what the future would be. Beyond that, you know, I think we're not giving any more guidance. Fair enough.

Appreciate the time, gentlemen.

I'm sorry, Steve.

Go ahead. Yeah, let me make clear. The demonstration we're doing would be to potential customers or other interested parties. It's not a public demonstration per se, but it's to folks that we're in conversation with.

Understood. Thank you very much, gentlemen, for entertaining questions, and thanks again for hosting the call. Very much appreciated. I think Summit, most everybody that's listening in feels the same way that you do. There's a lot of technology, and it has a lot of value.

Yeah, yeah. I think this is like a fight for the future. The last time I remember feeling this kind of excitement was what we call the Internet age, right? In the late 90s or the mid-90s, you knew that there was a big revolution that would impact everybody's life. So I'm excited. All of us are.

Thanks, Kevin. Very good. Thanks, Jim.

So we're going to go on to some of the questions. We received over 70 questions from investors. Many of the questions are variations of the same topic. And most of the questions were addressed in our prepared remarks. As we did last quarter, we tried to consolidate the questions on the same topic to address the basic issues. We won't be able to answer every question that was submitted, but we will go through several. And so the first question is, Sumit, can you provide any more color about your automotive LiDAR-A sample, the outdoor testing, and customer validation? And also, will there be a B or a C sample?

That's a good question. So as I mentioned, a sample, I think it was back in October also we gave color on this. A sample is a specific thing that is a general part that everybody can utilize to evaluate the impact your technology will have on the path they have. So therefore, it's funded by Microvision, obviously, and it enables us to address it to every potential interested party. It's got advanced features in our sensor. They must go through appropriate verification, as you can imagine. So, when you say 250 meters or resolution, you have to demonstrate that. And, of course, all the other custom requests that may or may not be there to evaluate for a specific, you know, part of it for somebody confidentially specifically for them. So, it's a great platform is how you think about an ASAMPLE. It allows us to – that's why we say, like, we have the ASAMPLE hardware, but we also have a development platform. So, Depending on what's happening, we address that. And that's why that data is, I think, a lot of the retail investors ask for, is that data going to be made public? The answer is like, no, because there could be confidential stuff in there. So no, this is benchmarking data that we provide to an interested party. So outdoor testing is a very important one. Obviously, one of the big features here is with our active scan locking, that allows us to have a time of flight LIDAR in a 9.5 nanometer laser, which is pretty unbelievable. In outdoor testing, you have to verify these features. That is something that is the most basic verification you have to do. Today is a very beautiful day in Seattle, Redmond area. It's bright up to what's called 70,000 lux. It's a pretty bright day. Some of the brightest days that are in all of US is about 100,000, unless you're in Death Valley, it's about 127,000 lux. So it's a very bright day. So you have to verify the performance over a wide range of conditions. That's very important. So you have to produce, as you can imagine, a broad body of data with all sorts of things, all sorts of modifications that somebody may or may not ask for. That's one important thing to remember. So a sample, again, like we said, there's a timeline for the hardware, but then the work starts of getting all this data to get everybody's questions answered, any interested party. And we probably most likely are going to get asked by interested parties further along to explore capabilities custom to them. So this is not something that all of the standard data sheets have. This is specifically for something of interest to any interested party. That testing has to continue as well. So that's why the period, just we embark on a big verification testing and everybody's thirst for data would be done, who's working with us under NDA, right? This would be done on the A sample and the development platform, I've said, so that's important to remember. And our current focus is the development of A sample, so there is no B or C sample. B and C sample, the best way to think about them, these are the, like let's say you go through a RFQ with an interested party, like an OEM, then that enables somebody to customize their base solution for that interested party. And that customization design, it could be a full redesign, a partial redesign. In most cases, a partial redesign. And, you know, qualification to their standards, whatever they require for their customization. And those are the BNCM samples and then goes towards the OEM launch cycle and it's got its own cadence. So at this moment, I think I want to be pretty clear. Our focus is A sample, but it is an actual pretty valuable because you have the precursor to every potential derivative of that that people could consider. So we have a platform which they can actually, we will be more than happy to accommodate their request for custom data, and they could, without any investment or waiting, they could actually see how we would have aligned to their plan, or how we do align to their plan. So that's pretty important. Now, we expect this thing to launch this pilot line, and that's actually a pretty important step, because regardless of what customization happens, When at B sample, the ingredients I mentioned, those are very important. If you can demonstrate them at A sample, you're significantly more mature, and you'll probably be a success for B and C sample increase, of course. So, again, this is something that we have to show, something that we have to show benchmark data. We have to have built confidence. We're fortunate that we have a decade-long history doing that. And then you would embark. So B and C sample, they're on the spectrum, but they are not part of our day-to-day planning right now.

Okay, second question is related to the $50 million ATM that we did in February. What are you spending $50 million on? Why do you need so much money? I'll take that question. You know, we're trying to become an important player in the automotive LIDAR market. And in the automotive LIDAR market, the staying power of a business is important. Also, we need a balance sheet that gives confidence to others in our ability to execute our plans. We need to be able to give confidence to customers, people perhaps in a strategic transaction, as well as to employees and future employees. And so that's another reason to have a strong balance sheet to show that confidence. And then it just seemed out of sync to be, you know, a $2 to $3 billion market cap company having such a low cash balance, particularly when you compared it to some of the other public LIDAR companies. Third question, why are you hiring employees if you're working on a strategic transaction? I'll take this one again. So, you know, first let me just remind you of the significant reduction we had in 2020 that really brought us down to a very low level of staff. And so, you know, why do we need to hire more employees? Well, first, we're working on aggressive timelines to complete the development, improve scalability. And for that work, we need more people and some additional skill sets. Second, we want to make sure that we have backups in critical skills and positions. We don't want to be in a place where one person, if they got ill, for example, that one person being out could seriously affect our ability to execute our plan. And then thirdly, we need to have an infrastructure in place to support the work that's going on. So we need IT, we need people operations, and we need accounting and finance at the appropriate levels to support the business. So those are all the reasons that we're bringing on some folks. Number – the fourth question was, can you provide an update on the April 2017 customer? I think Glenn asked that question as well. Not much more to add in terms of what I mentioned when Glenn asked the question, which, you know, the customer continues to ship product with our components – They continue to report their shipments and their quarterly royalties. We expect 2021 royalties are going to increase over 2020. And, you know, we're just hopeful and wish that customer a lot of success building up the volumes and sales of their product. The fifth question. We talked about scalability today. Why is being able to scale in your product so important? Sumit, you want to take that one? Yeah.

So I think I mentioned this also in the Q3 earnings call. Scalability is important to demonstrate the gravity of business and the product that they have. They would have a future capability of generating revenue and profits. So I think it's important to think about now that for the first time in the 20-year history or even The 20-year history of this company, finally we are in a market, in a market segment where there's other public examples of standalone companies that you can benchmark against, that you can see. Like, you finally have a race where we're not the only ones. There's no competition. We're there, okay? So keep that in mind. Now, everybody will talk about scaling, but it is pretty clear OEMs have a very specific idea of how the long-term market would be if they cannot win for a sensor company that can go multiple years of deployment. They're not going to redesign a sensor every year. That's not what automotive is. It is slow and steady and reliable. So therefore, it is very important to understand the long-term commercialization and scaling of the choices that we make. So anybody can have the best possible sensor solution. Why I believe that solid state MEMS scanning is powerful is because our scanner starts from a 200 millimeter wafer turn it into a module, control the electronics, optics, and it is able to do that wide scanning. Now, put that versus a mechanical scanner. You know, you can't negotiate your way down when you have a lot more components and you have mechanical parts. So, you know, right off the bat, when you talk about scalability, it's not just the fact that you can go from, you know, a small volume and ramp up to a high one. That is very important. Of course, that's one of the biggest things why you would leverage a MEMS-based scanner and a 905 nanometer laser system integrated together. with a lot of the features that we have, it's the fact that that is much more competitive. So regardless of where the entire conversation in the market, you know, with the folks that we're competing against, that's one of a very big conversation that kind of gets lost, you know, in the model. People are so focused on, do you have 251 meters single return, right? Yep, that's check, check, check. But the bigger question is, how are you going to win this if you know that the customer always looks at commercialization even harder than consumers? Repeat that. Whatever people have an understanding of the consumer market, automotive is significantly more conservative because they need to understand any sensor sales that they would make, that OEM would make in a car, is supported about 15 to 20 years behind. This supports my premise, of course, that consolidation is something we have to keep in mind. It is the level of investment that's involved. It's probably the path forward for the company, obviously. But also, That scaling part of it, if it's demonstrated, you have a high probability of potentially being successful. Otherwise, you can build a story and sell a story, but for me personally, it would not jive because if you can't really prove where the scalability is. It's very important to think about scalability. We just talked about what is the ASP and what the margin would be. That's a good conversation, but the conversation for any interested party in the world goes beyond that because they need to understand multiple years. You said millions of lives and billions of dollars over decades. So you can understand that's why scalability is very important, right? So if you combine all that together, right, you have to really give long-term confidence to hit target price points and margins that they would experience. And that's important. That's the step. So actually, I think Steve and I had a great conversation about this. Steve, do you want to add a couple more things to this?

Yeah, well, I think... One of the things when it's on scalability, we are putting together a pilot line, but just want you to be aware that we're not going hog wild with some big factory. We're building a pilot line to prove our capabilities and the fact that this product can be made to scale and can go. And the line could ramp up if it was needed, but that's the secondary. Right now we're focused on the appropriate level to be able to prove and show scalability. in the product. Okay. I think this is the last question we have. This question is regarding where we are in the process of seeking strategic alternatives. Anything you want to add on that, Suma, in addition to the comments we've already made?

Yes. I think the point I would start with is I want people to understand this. It's not a philosophical one, right? It's just common sense, and so you have to be pragmatic about it. With so many companies buying for the rollout volumes that are going to be there in OEM. And they're still the biggest game in town. Consolidation is going to be part of the conversation always. And any reasonable business person would say that has to be on the table at all times. So that's what we say, committed to it. So there's no ambiguity or reading between the lines. There's nothing to read between the lines. This is as straight as I can say it. So I think it is actually important for strategic alternatives, seeking that. That's number one. I think to realize the right value for the company, advancing our hardware, demonstrating scalability, again, I've hit on that quite a few minutes here, is key given the current competitive landscape. So as you get more people in there, the conversation is going different places, but I tend to want to just stay down. There's one thing that everybody can tell the story of their company, their product, saying, hey, I'm going to win. We're going to win. We're going to win. But there's another thing that you can see a company and seeing a group of people and seeing a product, when you can see the move yourself from the outside as an investor and say, I think they're going to win because this is how it would piece all together. Anybody, any reasonable person would see this is how it'd be. There's nothing exotic about it. And that's very important. So, um, I think like just come out and be pragmatic about it, which is, this is where we are and all the variations of the chess game. Yeah, it's reasonable. So therefore strategic alternatives still stays in the forefront of our thinking. All right. So it's very important. And again, The current key landscape associated with the market capitalization for potential parties, you can see where everything is, so it's very important to focus on the right thing. We continue to advance development of our automotive LIDAR. And again, as you notice, it's to a sample. Again, be pragmatic about what you have to enable so you can think through. You're not promising the moon and under-delivering. You have to just be reasonable about where everything is headed. and spend accordingly. I mean, that's pretty good. And for me personally, like, you know, the process continues. The process is always continuing, but we will not be commenting more on it. I think, you know, the question that Steve has created here is like a softer version of some of the questions, and I appreciate everybody's enthusiasm for the company and trying to understand, but as we've said before, I assure you, the process continues, but we will not be commenting on any specifics.

Okay. With that, that's the last question. Sumit, do you want to make any final comments?

In closing, I want to once again thank our employees, business partners, and our shareholders for their continued support. I look forward to reporting on our progress in the future. Thank you.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation You may now disconnect.